DRACONID METEOR SHOWER: The notoriously unpredictable Draconid meteor shower peaks this year on the night of Oct. 7-8. In most years, the Draconids come and go with a barely noticable peak of 10 or so meteors per hour. Occasionally, however, Earth passes through a dense clump of debris from parent comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and a meteor storm erupts. Just last year, Europeans witnessed a faint but furious outburst of 600 per hour. There is no reason to believe that 2012 is a "storm year." Nevertheless, northern hemisphere sky watchers are encouraged to be alert for slow-moving Draconids on Sunday night.EMERGING CME:A coronal mass ejection (CME) left the sun this morning, Oct. 5, and it could be heading for Earth. Orbiting at the L1 Lagrange point, the Solar and Heliosphere Observatory captured this image of the expanding cloud:

The source of the cloud appears to be an eruption of magnetic fields connecting sunspots 1582 and 1579. This conclusion is preliminary, however, and may be revised later today when more data are available. For now it appears that the CME will deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 7-8. Stay tuned for updates. www.spaceweather.com